Monday, September 8, 2014

Live Streamy Awards Not Captioned

On Sunday night, September 7, 2014, the Streamy Awards streamed live (no pun intended) at www.streamys.org. There were no closed captions. We had tweeted the Streamy Awards AND Dick Clark Productions, well in advance to ask if there would be closed captions, but neither responded. A captioning service (which we will not name) even tweeted the Streamys, but apparently had no response.

This was a huge event for the web TV community, and we deaf and hard of hearing were totally left out of it. Caption Action 2 posted angry comments all over the Streamy Awards facebook page; sent out angry tweets, spammed the Streamy Awards live chat room, AND today, filed a formal complaint against the Streamy Awards and Dick Clark Productions with Coca-Cola!

Why Coca-Cola? Because Coke was the sponsor of the live Streamy Awards! Their money paid to produce a show watched internationally by millions of people. While millions of deaf and hard of hearing could not watch. Think about that the next time you grab a Coke to drink!

If only there had been captions so we could have enjoyed watching Lizzie Bennet get its well-deserved award for Best Drama!

It is very easy to file a complaint against the Streamy Awards with Coca-Cola. Just call

(courtesy of CocaCola)

800-438-2653

Press 2 when asked by recording. You will get a live person quickly during work hours.

It is too late for this year's Streamys. We are trying our best to make a huge stink about the lack of captioning so that next year, the 2015 Streamy Awards - the 5th Streamy Awards - will be captioned. You can help by adding your demands for captions to our complaints!

Update: If you search Twitter on Streamys and captioning you will find that in 2010 the Streamys boasted of having captions in five languages. So why did they stop?? Save a buck? Didn't care about deaf and hard of hearing? We suspect the reason for captioning in 2010 was not accessibility but because it is international.